The Backstory with Patty Steele

Agatha Christie is the biggest selling novelist in world history. Well over 2 billion books sold in 103 languages. She is the forever queen of mystery. But her biggest mystery is her 1926 disappearance. It made headlines all over the world.

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You think sex in the 18th century was all about being shy and virtuous? Not so much. Wait until you hear about the percentage of women who were pregnant before their wedding day. The Revolutionary War . . was actually on the cusp of a sexual revolution!

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Before the world was industrialized less than 200 years ago . . it smelled really different! They didn’t have to deal with the smell of gasoline fumes, burning rubber or oil, or the output of giant smokey factories. But imagine 3 1/2 million pounds of manure dumped onto the streets of New York City every day! Were they nose blind?

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Stephen King had nothing when he was a kid . . no dad, no money . . but he did have a flashlight so he could read books under the covers. His passion turned into his own books and films like Carrie, The Shining, Shawshank Redemption, Stand By Me, It, and The Long Walk. So, what was his secret?

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Communicating quickly with family, friends, and work colleagues, whether miles apart or rooms apart, has always been a challenge. It’s one human beings have been dealing with for thousands of years. We’ve used everything from smoke signals, to telegraph, to telephones, to weird devices like a tube you’d blow into to fetch an extra blanket.

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When you picture an art heist, like the one last month at the Louvre in Paris, you picture really cool looking international thieves. The guys nabbed in Paris however, were just regular small time crooks. But let’s go back to the most valuable museum heist in world history. It happened in Boston 35 years ago and was carried out by two guys wearing fake mustaches.

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Monster stories are usually just fun thrillers told around a campfire. But what happened in a small Illinois town 50 years ago, has never been explained.

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Halloween is really festive and a little spooky. But its origins and most of its traditions were both festive and spooky, on steroids! They originated in ancient Ireland, where the Celts held raging parties involving human sacrifice!

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It’s the 96th anniversary of Black Thursday . . the day the stock market crashed, kicking off the Great Depression. There were stories in the immediate aftermath of dozens of investors jumping from buildings on Wall Street. But what inspired those stories and what really happened?

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When we look at iconic movies, we can’t imagine them being different in any way from what we finally see on the screen. But making movies is an evolutionary process. Turns out Raiders of the Lost Ark almost didn’t get made and the role of Indiana Jones almost went to another very popular actor.

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It’s the Perfect Scenario for a Horror Movie. A Contractor Lures 33 Kids to His Normal Looking Home to Party and Talk About a Job . . and They’re Never Seen Again. But Did John Wayne Gacy, the So Called Killer Clown, Have Accomplices? He Maintained He Did Until His Execution. No One Was Ever Charged but There Is Some Evidence.

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The Salem witch trials took place 333 years ago. They left a lot of bad energy in that small New England town. But folks who’ve visited one house in particular have some pretty chilling stories to tell about being strangled, burned, and scratched by 300 year old ghosts!

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